Update at Speed
Oh, the last few weeks have gone by so quickly. I feel like a broken record writing/saying that so often- but it's just so true.
This most immediately previous weekend was of course a pleasant reminder that He is risen- He is risen, indeed! I hope everyone had a lovely Resurrection Sunday*.
Our church service was nice as well- here is the link:
https://www.fbcmwc.org/watch?v=NTM0NDI3RTQ0Ng
(Side note: that's Carissa on the upper right at the opening song. During practice, she held her head down and essentially hid her face with her hair through the whole song. I asked her to "hold her head up, please" right at the end of practice- and thankfully, once it came to the real thing, she did! Here's the weird part: later on I approached her to give her a big hug in appreciation and to tell her how proud I was of her performance, and she wormed away from me with a clear "no" that came out almost like a shout! She insisted that the "only" reason she held her head up was so that she could see the kids' director better. I don't get it: is she maturing into the teenage years before she even turns 9? O_o)
The kids had a nice "Eggstravaganza" event at the church on "Easter Saturday" morning, where they loaded up on all sorts of treats and non-edible goodies- and were even generous to Amy and me with some of their earnings. Our Pastor said that we had over 100 non-volunteer, non-church-member present at the event, for a total of about 300-something. Church attendance the next morning was at right about 360 or 380, I think (side note: however many church bulletins we printed were not enough, so the choir didn't get any placed on their seats).
The threats about the "Day of Vengeance" from the freaks in the trans community didn't seem to come to fruition at any point in the weekend, but our church security response team was present in good numbers all the same. I switched my carry piece from the CZ P07** back to the Glock 19, which doesn't make a huge bit of difference but the holster I use with the G19 is softer which makes for more pleasant carrying over longer periods (which applied to that weekend).
After church we had a nice turkey/pot luck dinner with a lot of our close church friends: there was turkey, ham, broccoli casserole, Hawaiian rolls, mashed potatoes ("smashed potatoes," ie with the skins included) with optional bacon, chives, and cheese to sprinkle over the top, and Amy made jello eggs and chocolate cupcakes with brilliantly-colored frosting. I don't think anybody brought home any leftovers; we were there from 1 till just after 5; our chickens probably didn't like us for that (we didn't let them out in the morning and only let them roam a little bit between 11:45 and 1-ish before leaving for the lunch), but with a lot of good food, fellowship, and conversation, we didn't want it to be a short time together. Next Sunday is going to be a special spaghetti lunch fundraiser for the long-ago-mentioned missionary candidate, so that'll be a diversion from the usual as well.
I didn't originally intend to have a cut but this became so long that it makes sense to have one now:
The scale continues to hover around 185, though- for now- it is slightly below it. I have made yet more changes to my routines here and there- the most recent being, walking around the neighborhood after taking Barrett to church for youth group, instead of just driving back home and returning to pick him up in 2 hours- but at this point I have doubts that I'm ever going to find a "silver bullet" to get me down to the 170s or below. Unless something drastic changes in my physiology I am going to have to accept that this is going to be a nasty back-and-forth battle for probably the rest of my life. As always, God help me. -_-
We had some positively batty weather swings the previous week; one day NINETY degrees (92 per my car), two days later it was 34 and somewhere below freezing with wind chill. This is especially noticeable to me because I have been sent back out of the warehouse into a job site again. It's great to be in the field again! The build/design characteristics of this job are *also* what I'd describe as positively batty, but we have a good foreman and a pretty decent crew so it's been a nice couple of weeks getting myself "re-acclimated" to work on the outside. Our materials collection point is about 200 yards from the work site, and it's an uphill walk to take materials into the building- so I've been loving it, except when it gets (got) hot. I am hoping that the cool weather holds at least until mid-April (insane temperature swings notwithstanding), but if not I will just deal with it like I usually do.
Gas prices have leapt to $3.19 in the last week, after staying in the 2.60-2.80 for a really long "winter" time. Let's go Brandon.
Hopefully that's all the increase we're going to see from them switching to the "less-lean" mixture- but, who knows?
The weekend getaway we embarked on to celebrate our 14th anniversary was totally excellent. It was about two hours out of town, in a really small cabin (pictures will, like all other things in the last few months, be shared sometime much later), within a relatively-rural and sparse community. I will share a few pictures and some other details later.
When we got home we discovered that one of the hens, Zoey, died mysteriously; Amy thinks they may have gone "stir crazy" and she got trampled. Amy at first started to blame herself because she didn't ask our neighbor to let them out for a few hours on Saturday or Sunday; I told her we don't have any idea what really happened and she absolutely should not blame herself over it. I also reminded her that birds can kill themselves without our "assistance," via their own sheer stupidity...anybody ever see the video of the ostrich that rips its own head off? Anyway, that little bit of a downer did not at all overshadow the total enjoyment of our anniversary weekend.
Speaking of the chickens, our rooster Joey earned his keep a couple weeks ago. A fox got in the yard and grabbed Red Rita in its jaws, but Joey caused such a ruckus that Amy had enough time to get out in the yard, see what happened, and was able to shock the fox enough that it dropped Red and ran away. She put some of the cut-binding gel we used on Barrett (and me) a while back, and Red was visually healed back to normal several days ago. Red laid one egg immediately after the incident but hasn't laid any more eggs until today; frankly I don't blame her. We are now "down" to five hens: Red Rita, Coco 2 Bertha, Wren, Grayla, and Specky Betsy (who is the only remaining survivor of our original collection). They've been producing eggs, collectively, in plentiful enough quantity that we've sold about 8 dozen eggs to friends and neighbors and generally have about a dozen a week to enjoy for ourselves.
Soon and very soon, garden work is going to begin in earnest. We also need to reposition the chicken coop, and I have to start mowing our yards again. I have a long list of other more-than-minimally-important tasks annotated in my phone (because they frequently get neglected if just left "in my head") that we should make progress on and finish- ideally- within the remainder of this month.
When I made the payment on our house for this month, I immediately noticed that the standard monthly payment has risen $230- which we think is due to insurance, but haven't checked with anyone in a position to know who could confirm it. Whatever the reason for the cost, it's an increase I would obviously be happier without.
I found out that one of my friends from Nav School just recently made O-5 (Lieutenant Colonel). I have all sorts of thoughts about that specifically, and the USAF/DOD and myself in general, that I am compelled to post about...eventually. This is a just a place-holder for me to keep it in mind.
Last week I noticed that my front left tire had a slow leak; taking it to the gas station for some free air also led me to the discovery that the tire was nearing critical baldness. Fortunately I was able to make a quick walk-in at Discount Tire and get a new one...for about $100 out the door. I guess it coulda been worse.
*For the record: it's not that I don't like or accept the term "Easter" to describe the day, but I think it's undeniable that "Resurrection Sunday" is a bit more to the point- though "The Sunday of Christ's Resurrection" would leave no room for questions or ambiguity at all whatsoever. Too bad it's a bit of a mouthful for a holiday name, though.
**I also now call it the CZ KNEE-07 because I discovered that when shooting at a man-sized target at 100 yards, the sights are such at that range that I have to aim at where the subject's knees would be to score hits on the torso.
God is good. That is all.
This most immediately previous weekend was of course a pleasant reminder that He is risen- He is risen, indeed! I hope everyone had a lovely Resurrection Sunday*.
Our church service was nice as well- here is the link:
https://www.fbcmwc.org/watch?v=NTM0NDI3RTQ0Ng
(Side note: that's Carissa on the upper right at the opening song. During practice, she held her head down and essentially hid her face with her hair through the whole song. I asked her to "hold her head up, please" right at the end of practice- and thankfully, once it came to the real thing, she did! Here's the weird part: later on I approached her to give her a big hug in appreciation and to tell her how proud I was of her performance, and she wormed away from me with a clear "no" that came out almost like a shout! She insisted that the "only" reason she held her head up was so that she could see the kids' director better. I don't get it: is she maturing into the teenage years before she even turns 9? O_o)
The kids had a nice "Eggstravaganza" event at the church on "Easter Saturday" morning, where they loaded up on all sorts of treats and non-edible goodies- and were even generous to Amy and me with some of their earnings. Our Pastor said that we had over 100 non-volunteer, non-church-member present at the event, for a total of about 300-something. Church attendance the next morning was at right about 360 or 380, I think (side note: however many church bulletins we printed were not enough, so the choir didn't get any placed on their seats).
The threats about the "Day of Vengeance" from the freaks in the trans community didn't seem to come to fruition at any point in the weekend, but our church security response team was present in good numbers all the same. I switched my carry piece from the CZ P07** back to the Glock 19, which doesn't make a huge bit of difference but the holster I use with the G19 is softer which makes for more pleasant carrying over longer periods (which applied to that weekend).
After church we had a nice turkey/pot luck dinner with a lot of our close church friends: there was turkey, ham, broccoli casserole, Hawaiian rolls, mashed potatoes ("smashed potatoes," ie with the skins included) with optional bacon, chives, and cheese to sprinkle over the top, and Amy made jello eggs and chocolate cupcakes with brilliantly-colored frosting. I don't think anybody brought home any leftovers; we were there from 1 till just after 5; our chickens probably didn't like us for that (we didn't let them out in the morning and only let them roam a little bit between 11:45 and 1-ish before leaving for the lunch), but with a lot of good food, fellowship, and conversation, we didn't want it to be a short time together. Next Sunday is going to be a special spaghetti lunch fundraiser for the long-ago-mentioned missionary candidate, so that'll be a diversion from the usual as well.
I didn't originally intend to have a cut but this became so long that it makes sense to have one now:
The scale continues to hover around 185, though- for now- it is slightly below it. I have made yet more changes to my routines here and there- the most recent being, walking around the neighborhood after taking Barrett to church for youth group, instead of just driving back home and returning to pick him up in 2 hours- but at this point I have doubts that I'm ever going to find a "silver bullet" to get me down to the 170s or below. Unless something drastic changes in my physiology I am going to have to accept that this is going to be a nasty back-and-forth battle for probably the rest of my life. As always, God help me. -_-
We had some positively batty weather swings the previous week; one day NINETY degrees (92 per my car), two days later it was 34 and somewhere below freezing with wind chill. This is especially noticeable to me because I have been sent back out of the warehouse into a job site again. It's great to be in the field again! The build/design characteristics of this job are *also* what I'd describe as positively batty, but we have a good foreman and a pretty decent crew so it's been a nice couple of weeks getting myself "re-acclimated" to work on the outside. Our materials collection point is about 200 yards from the work site, and it's an uphill walk to take materials into the building- so I've been loving it, except when it gets (got) hot. I am hoping that the cool weather holds at least until mid-April (insane temperature swings notwithstanding), but if not I will just deal with it like I usually do.
Gas prices have leapt to $3.19 in the last week, after staying in the 2.60-2.80 for a really long "winter" time. Let's go Brandon.
Hopefully that's all the increase we're going to see from them switching to the "less-lean" mixture- but, who knows?
The weekend getaway we embarked on to celebrate our 14th anniversary was totally excellent. It was about two hours out of town, in a really small cabin (pictures will, like all other things in the last few months, be shared sometime much later), within a relatively-rural and sparse community. I will share a few pictures and some other details later.
When we got home we discovered that one of the hens, Zoey, died mysteriously; Amy thinks they may have gone "stir crazy" and she got trampled. Amy at first started to blame herself because she didn't ask our neighbor to let them out for a few hours on Saturday or Sunday; I told her we don't have any idea what really happened and she absolutely should not blame herself over it. I also reminded her that birds can kill themselves without our "assistance," via their own sheer stupidity...anybody ever see the video of the ostrich that rips its own head off? Anyway, that little bit of a downer did not at all overshadow the total enjoyment of our anniversary weekend.
Speaking of the chickens, our rooster Joey earned his keep a couple weeks ago. A fox got in the yard and grabbed Red Rita in its jaws, but Joey caused such a ruckus that Amy had enough time to get out in the yard, see what happened, and was able to shock the fox enough that it dropped Red and ran away. She put some of the cut-binding gel we used on Barrett (and me) a while back, and Red was visually healed back to normal several days ago. Red laid one egg immediately after the incident but hasn't laid any more eggs until today; frankly I don't blame her. We are now "down" to five hens: Red Rita, Coco 2 Bertha, Wren, Grayla, and Specky Betsy (who is the only remaining survivor of our original collection). They've been producing eggs, collectively, in plentiful enough quantity that we've sold about 8 dozen eggs to friends and neighbors and generally have about a dozen a week to enjoy for ourselves.
Soon and very soon, garden work is going to begin in earnest. We also need to reposition the chicken coop, and I have to start mowing our yards again. I have a long list of other more-than-minimally-important tasks annotated in my phone (because they frequently get neglected if just left "in my head") that we should make progress on and finish- ideally- within the remainder of this month.
When I made the payment on our house for this month, I immediately noticed that the standard monthly payment has risen $230- which we think is due to insurance, but haven't checked with anyone in a position to know who could confirm it. Whatever the reason for the cost, it's an increase I would obviously be happier without.
I found out that one of my friends from Nav School just recently made O-5 (Lieutenant Colonel). I have all sorts of thoughts about that specifically, and the USAF/DOD and myself in general, that I am compelled to post about...eventually. This is a just a place-holder for me to keep it in mind.
Last week I noticed that my front left tire had a slow leak; taking it to the gas station for some free air also led me to the discovery that the tire was nearing critical baldness. Fortunately I was able to make a quick walk-in at Discount Tire and get a new one...for about $100 out the door. I guess it coulda been worse.
*For the record: it's not that I don't like or accept the term "Easter" to describe the day, but I think it's undeniable that "Resurrection Sunday" is a bit more to the point- though "The Sunday of Christ's Resurrection" would leave no room for questions or ambiguity at all whatsoever. Too bad it's a bit of a mouthful for a holiday name, though.
**I also now call it the CZ KNEE-07 because I discovered that when shooting at a man-sized target at 100 yards, the sights are such at that range that I have to aim at where the subject's knees would be to score hits on the torso.
God is good. That is all.